The American justice announced Wednesday the indictment of a leader of the gang MS-13 by using for the first time charges of terrorism to fight the criminal organization of Hispanic origin dreaded for its violence.
The Salvadoran Armando Eliu Melgar Diaz is notably accused of having provided material support to terrorists, instigating terrorist acts in the United States and financing drug trafficking.
According to the indictment filed in the court of Alexandria, Virginia, he directed the activities of the MS-13 on the east coast of the United States from El Salvador by having ordered or approved numerous murders, supervised the trafficking of drug and collected money from around 20 groups in the region.
Armando Eliu Melgar Diaz lived illegally in the United States from 2003 to 2016 before being returned to El Salvador. He then became the main coordinator of the group's activities on the American east coast. He is currently in detention in El Salvador, accused of drug trafficking and murder.
Origin in the 1980s
The ministry did not say why it decided to use the terrorist charges, but noted that the government of El Salvador had designated the MS-13 as a terrorist group.
Created in the mid-1980s to protect the Hispanic minority from Los Angeles gangs, Mara Salvatrucha has spread to ten states in the country.
Its members expelled to El Salvador revived the organization there, as well as in Honduras and Guatemala, where it spreads terror. President Donald Trump, a staunch opponent of illegal immigration, regularly claims that MS-13 members infiltrate the caravans of Central American migrants who are trying to cross the border to seek asylum.
An activity without borders
"The MS-13 is a violent transnational organization whose activities have no borders," said John Durham, head of the ministry's special unit to investigate the gang.
"The only way to beat the MS-13 is to treat it as an organization, focusing on the command structure and deploying all the power of government against a common enemy," he added.
The department also announced charges of murder, drug trafficking and the abduction of 21 suspected MS-13 members arrested in New York and Nevada in separate operations.
He also said he would seek the death penalty in the trial of gang leader Alexi Saenz, who was indicted in 2017 for seven murders in New York.
The last capital execution for a federally tried crime in New York State dates back to 1954. The Trump government carried out the first capital execution of a federal convict on Tuesday morning in 17 years.
- World